MUSEUMS, HISTORY OF

history of the institutions that preserve and interpret the material evidence of the human race, human activity, and the natural world. As such, museums have a long history, springing from what may be an innate human desire to collect and interpret and having discernible origins in large collections built up by individuals and groups before the modern era. This article traces the history of museums, first by noting the etymology of the word museum and its derivatives, next by describing the private collecting conducted in ancient and medieval times, and finally by reviewing the development of modern public museums from the Renaissance to the present day. Geoffrey D. Lewis Additional reading Until recently the information relating to museums has been much dispersed, but detailed studies are now being published in book form. The following list identifies some of the literature available.Works concerning the history of museums and collecting include Edward P. Alexander, Museums in Motion: An Introduction to the History and Functions of Museums (1979), and Museum Masters: Their Museums and Their Influence (1983), tracing the origins of 12 important 18th-, 19th-, and 20th-century museums; Germain Bazin, The Museum Age, trans. from French (1967); Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (1994), on natural history collecting before 1700; Kenneth Hudson, Museums of Influence (1987), reviewing worldwide museum development over the past 200 years through the histories of 37 pioneer museums; Oliver Impey and Arthur MacGregor (eds.), The Origins of Museums: The Cabinets of Curiosities in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Europe (1985); Susan Sheets-Pyenson, Cathedrals of Science: The Development of Colonial Natural History Museums During the Late Nineteenth Century (1988); and Niels von Holst, Creators, Collectors, and Connoisseurs: The Anatomy of Artistic Taste from Antiquity to the Present Day (1967; originally published in German, 1960). Ongoing research is published in Journal of the History of Collections (semiannual). Geoffrey D. Lewis